UK‑wide TV news gives limited attention to May’s elections – but independence dominates when devolved contests are covered

UK news coverage of May’s elections in England, Scotland and Wales

Our latest research has tracked UK-wide television news coverage of the May’s elections in England, Wales and Scotland. Specifically, we assessed how often the elections featured on the UK’s flagship TV network news bulletins on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

UK-wide TV news continues to be widely watched across the UK. In both Scotland and Wales, for example, more people tune in to UK-wide news than to the national bulletins. So how they cover the election campaign represents an important source of information and analysis for many voters.  

Our analysis runs from 2 March 2026, the date the first party manifesto was launched, to 20 April.

Overall, we have found relatively limited coverage so far, with the exception of Channel 4 News, suggesting devolved contests are being treated as second-order elections. In network news coverage, devolution and independence has been the most prominent policy issue.

We found that only Channel 4 News has provided frequent in-depth coverage of the three elections so far. They have broadcast seven substantial items about the English local elections, six about the Holyrood election, and five about the Senedd election. Channel 4 has also produced in-depth features with substantial policy scrutiny, including a Scottish leaders debate which replaced the broadcaster’s regular bulletin on April 14.

BBC News at Ten has primarily featured short items announcing the launch of party manifestos or campaigns, usually around 30 seconds. These focused on signalling when parties had launched their campaigns and on their main policy pledges, without providing any scrutiny or in-depth reporting.

The Welsh Conservatives and Reform UK, who launched their manifestos early, on March 2 and 5, long before the official campaign period started on April 8, did not receive any television news coverage. This was perhaps due to the manifestos being launched before the tighter election impartiality rules came into effect. The BBC’s election rules, for example, state as a minimum network news should cover the launch of major parties’ manifestos (or equivalent events), but this is from March 30.

On April 12, BBC News at Ten featured an in-depth 9-minute item covering the Scottish Leader’s debate. This suggests that as we get closer to the elections, coverage will be ramped up, with similar levels of coverage in Wales.

ITV News at Ten has barely the elections to date, with just two items: one on the launch of the Conservative English local election campaign on March 13 and another on the SNP’s Scottish election campaign on April 16. Instead, ITV’s election coverage has featured on its early evening bulletins and regional broadcasts.

Coverage is starting to ramp up, last week,13-19 April, saw 11 election items featured on UK network news, the most of any week so far in the campaign. This suggests, as we get closer to polling day, coverage will become more substantial as the elections become more immediate concerns for voters.

Across all broadcasters, the English local election and Scottish Holyrood elections have been reported slightly more prominently than the Welsh Senedd election – despite the likely change of government from Labour to Plaid or possibly even Reform.

Party prominence

While it is too early in the campaign to make a substantial assessment of the balance of coverage, Labour and the SNP seem to be benefiting from a slight incumbency bounce, having led more TV news items than their political rivals to date.

All the parties have so far received several references each. This is because, for the first time at least in the BBC’s election guidelines, Labour, Conservatives, Reform, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP have been labelled major parties, so it is expected they all broadly receive similar levels of coverage.

The BBC acknowledged this in a recent statement: “An important thing about these guidelines is that they make clear the era of two-party politics, or the more recent period of ‘big parties’ and ‘smaller parties’, is not the world we now live in. This means our coverage may look a bit different as we reflect the new political realities.”

But our analysis suggests this breadth of perspectives could be limiting the depth of analysis.

Policy

Independence and Health and Social Care have been the two most prominent policy issues in coverage of the Senedd and Holyrood elections so far. In fact, independence has been mentioned in more than half of the items covering the devolved elections.

By contrast, coverage of the English local elections often revolved around polling and a horse-race narrative rather than policy issues.